Social Media Team

August 09, 2011

The London Riots, going on as I write this, for all the wrong reasons have brought to the forefront the issue of communicating and engaging with Gen Y / Millennials. In a classic case of shooting the messenger many have "blamed" social media, which is obviously the wrong target even through it may be an accelerant as Mathew Ingram points out in a well balanced review Network effects: Social media’s role in the London riots.

We shouldn't forget that social media e.g. Twitter is also being used as a moderating tool, see this, by Leicester Police:

And of course as a political tool by those wanting to jump on the political point-scoring bandwagon like John Prescott of the defeated Labour Party:

How do we use social media with Gen Y?

The overall question this all raises is something bigger - how to develop dialogues with Gen Y and sustain their participation. This is important for businesses and government sectors wanting to influence career choice.

There's a lot being done. For example Houston-based environmental management company Waste Management says that the majority of traffic to its career website comes from those who have clicked over from Facebook. Waste Management is hardly a glamorous career, and hardly a Facebook hot topic, yet Waste Management has achieved great results. The company now adds videos of current employees to its Page, and uses recruiters to speak more directly with Facebook members as part of its recruiting campaigns.

It's not just about a social presence

The bottom line - you need to be present in the same social media spaces and places as your potential candidates. That's obvious enough. But what you then need is execution capabilities, a program of contribution and engagement, and remaining active, interested and visible. And some analytics help to support the cause.

More often then not I've found that the "presence" is not the issue for larger firms and government Agencies. What is more the challenge is the internal culture, the mindset, the managment attention and commitment, and the belief that this is the real work of recruiting Gen Y and not a side-show.

In the bigger picture it is the structure and operations of the "social media team" which is the challenge. This might start with recruiting, or product development, or customer service, or marketing, or events, or sales - but the plan needs to be understood and management committed to its bigger implications and resource allocation.

Here's a tip - don't try this on your own! We used to say "just get out there into the social media and do something". But that won't work for recruiting. Imagine being recruited through Facebook by a social and engaging person from a firm or government Agency, and then discovering that when you joined the organisation (1) noone else knew or cared anything about social media, and (2) Facebook for general staff was blocked. Sorry, company policy. That's just tears for everyone.

These issues present one kind of "political / organisational" challenge - a rather big kind at that.

Where to engage - owned, paid and earned media

Another is strategic approach to where and how to engage. Although much of establishment Marketing has struggled to come to grips with social media, the paradigm of paid media, owned media and earned media is now gaining some traction.

For Gen Y and recruitment, or career engagement, we then ask where do you conduct activities across paid media, owned media, and earned media - and in what proportion for what expected ROI.

For example Brazen Careerist offers forums for young professionals to self-develop, and puts them in live conversations with recruiters. Virtual recruiting events, sponsored by a firm or Agency, would be part of an owned media plan.

Getting to Gen Y is hard work

Rebecca Ryan runs Next Generation Consulting, based in Wisconsin in the US Mid-west, a firm "primarily with companies who want to become great places to work for the next generation".

She makes the point that transitioning to this Gen Y engagement can be hard work, for example she aims to "tell the truth about what it takes to engage the next generation". And she warns: "Rebecca's message and speaking style is not for everyone. If you have uptight, change-resistant participants who can't laugh, and aren't willing to make investments in their future, please stop reading right now and google speakers who make us feel comfortable with the status quo."

The bottom line is that it takes a willingness to change, the ability to achieve change, and a commitment to move forward in new ways - and that's not for every organisation! Her blog and twitter are worth following.

The path towards engaging and, say, recruiting, Gen Y though social media isn't especially new, even if it's implementation may not yet be widespread. Heather Huhman wrote How Recruiting Gen Y Differs from Recruiting Other Generations in 2009 and it still holds true. She notes that Gen Y are regarded are considered lazy and difficult to attract and retain, yet at the same time by definition they are the future of the workforce.

So how does the existing workplace adapt to the potential new workforce? They are so different to previous generations because they are digital natives and because they have a strong sense of entitlement. Therefore, plans for engagement have to include an active presence in their digital world, as mentioned earlier, and also an important cultural shift.

Not taking offence

Those people representing firms and Agencies have to learn not to take offence at Gen Y's attitudes and behaviours in the social media, the lack of "respect" for superiors and systems and reward structures - these attitudes are all out there and active and part of being Gen Y.

The "why" and "why not" responses are not to be taken as an affront but as part of the normal thinking process of the group. Here again the social media team needs to know how to respond to this type of thinking, how to engage others in the organisation without them taking offence, and how to keep conversations alive not shut them down. This can be a confronting process and internal culture change which is needed on the part of those wishing to recruit through these channels.

Social media as a retardant

Coming back to the London Riots - could anything have been done to moderate the riots or to redirect to anger if social media had been used more actively?

Quite possible yes, and no doubt we'll see a lot more attention being paid to analysing where these Gen Y are congregating in social media, and working out how to effectively engage with them. That's not to say that the riots could have been avoided. But just as it acts as an accelerant it can also act as a retardant.

What do you have as the biggest challenges in connecting with Gen Y - organisationally?

Do you think that the biggest organisational impediment is cultural or in finding the right places to engage?

June 02, 2011

Since the early 80s Marketing has taken a turn towards "relationship" marketing and such things as "lifetime customer value". However this "value" is still transactional-based.

The kink in the road toward relationship marketing was a reaction away from immediate transactional value towards creating and measuring long-term net gain based upon superior customer satisfaction and benefits.

The trek to "relationship marketing" has been a long 30 year journey, and it still rates a conference spot. See for example Session Three of the upcoming "annual Miller Heiman Sales Performance Summit for sales leaders" where the National Australia Bank is presenting: "Transformation Time; Paul Freeman, Head of Capability Business Banking of National Australia Bank, will present on their journey to become a World Class relationship bank".

The concept of the relationship model has been highly successful, as we all take this for granted as Business 101 these days. Or perhaps it was always obvious but was glorified and codified by Marketing theorists seeking the next swag of publications and seminars?

Marketing professionals resisting social business

In any case, although the business community broadly accepts this relationship model as a given, ironically there is still a strong resistance about social media's role in this among the marketing professionals and more-so the Marketing Professional groups with which I am familiar.

There is some kind of turf resistance while they try to figure out how to "professionally" own this space. For example up until now the Australian Marketing Institute Annual Conference has had zero content on the topic, and although there was some this year it was at the level of "Facebook campaign success stories" - the epitome of transactional relationships.

Relationship marketing is about transactions over a longer time frame

Now here's the thing. This "relationship marketing" and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) still focuses on transactional value - it's just a form of discounted cash flow of the lifetime events of a customer as they relate to probable transaction capture from those events. The marketing "edge" is as simple as this - to be at the right place at the right time for those typical lifecycle events - drip feeding at the right reading of the tea leaves. The "relationship" part is a view of a different time frame - long-term versus short term, not of different forms of customer valuation.

Relationship marketing is still just about focusing on the customers with the highest lifecycle sales possibilites.

New forms of customer valuation are required

But, what we know today is that new forms of customer valuationare required, and many organisations are reconsidering how they determine customer value. They are recognising that instead of focusing on revenue or profit associated with an individual's or household's transactions, that they need to start to think about the value of influence and collaboration.

Understanding a person's social reach combined with their propensity to share thoughts becomes a method to extrapolate value, and in turn to help update segmentation rules and adapt relationship strategies.

The relationship wanted is the relationship of the social medium

But here's the catch - these very same customers want and expect a different kind of relationship with the companies whose products and service they buy. And it's not easy to predict what those expectations are - for some it may mean a deeper relationship extending to business innovation and for others just a more efficient buying experience with little or no product enquiry or interaction.

Fragmented social business isn't going to work

To know which suits which customer segments it is imperative to track and understand holistically across the organisation the influence, referrals and collaboration of the customers in their social spaces. That's no easy task because very few organisations today deploy this holistic social business management.

This need for a holistic approach to social business implementation and customer relationships is a recurring theme in the drive to increasing customer value today. For example in social media customers need to be treated in the right way, they need to be interacted with and engaged in the right way, and different arms of the organisation need to be fully aware of the nature of the interactions, if not the detail.

For example if the new knowledge gleaned from successful social engagement leads to more efficient segmentation then the appropriate parts of the organisation for that specific segmentation need to take a coordinating role, otherwise value could be destroyed.

It's a complex business. And it requires serious top-down support, and serious cross-organisation implementation and measurement. It's not about a support team of 4 people in an organisation of 4,000 people servicing the squeaky wheel tweeps.

Takes proper business planning not more staff monitoring

It's a truism that the growth of social media has put the customer in a stronger position. Anyone can have a voice and everyone expects “human” near-real-time responses. Organizations operating without improved customer value metrics are hiring staff to monitor and respond to virtually everything – which is difficult to scale – not only because of the sheer volumes of activity, but the risk of having inconsistent responses or staff that are untrained in the art of risk mitigation.

What they really need is not a rush to operational solutions, but proper business planning and strategy. It will most likely require the services of a solid management consulting group, skilled in complex organisations, industry sectors, project management and organisational change. It's not a "call center up" initiative. And to be frank it's not something that can picked up at a marketing conference or from Facebook campaign award nights.

Bearing in mind that most complex enterprises already have ways and means of successfully coordinating cross-functional activies,then this provides a lever for the transformation to a social business and more extensive measurement and action around enhanced customer value.

Real change requires top-down support. The business case for investment should be about the extent to which new customer valuation insights can help the organization to compete more successfully. That means integrating customer engagement across the organization, not developing a silo directed at social media.

What is the new valuation metric?

However if we are talking about Customer Loyalty Value rather then Customer Lifetime Value then perhaps we are starting to embrace some of the new valuation metrics made evident through social business using social media. Unfortunately "loyalty" programs have all but degenerated into very broad direct marketing programs so we might be best to dispense with that term. In which case we need a new term, and of course new measures for customer lifetime value.

For example traditional CLV models use variations of "propensity to purchase" in their mathematical calculations, and it typically is related to recency of last purchase. Internet marketeers know that the very time a customer has just purchased a product from the web is the best possible time to offer them something else - the upsell. In the offline world it is similar - the upsell of extended warranties on home appliances at the point of sale of the latter.

However do we now need to measure not the recency of last purchase but also the recency of last significant interaction. This could be via contact with an influencer, a high value collaborator, a review on a website, a comment on Facebook? This is where we need a new addition of Berger & Nasr's classic "LIfetime Customer Value" - one of the most cited books on the topic. In fact if you refer to their book you'll see how directly transactional their mathematical models are.

Adding in social metrics is a whole new kettle of fish. What that really means is that adding in social metrics would for the first time turn the traditional CLV "relationship marketing" equation from one based on transactions to one which incorporate measures of relationship!

How do you re-envisage customer value?

What non-transactional measures are the most important for a social business?

What would the new Customer Lifetime Value equation look like?

What is the greatest organisational roadblock to implementation new CLV measures?

In the case of "social business" it tells us a few things, and these all have a very high correlation (above 0.9433):

People searching for "not a function" "is not a function" are very strongly correlated with the term "social business";

As is "what does it mean" and "is considered"; and,

"why would".

So we see how strongly the ideas of the role of social business in the organisational structure is linked with definitional questions and with the question of why would you do this? - where, what, why. Or perhaps what, why, where is the better logical order.

These are the top-of-mind questions associated with social business, if I am reading my Correlate tea-leaves correctly.

October 15, 2010

By accident I came across a promotion for Vaseline's "140th birthday". It's a product owned by Unilever - a company which boasts 1H2010 sales of €21.9 billion, "underlying volume growth 6.6%, underlying sales growth 3.8% and underlying price growth (2.6)%, underlying operating margin up 30bps with continuing strong gross margins offset by significant investment in advertising and promotional expenditure, up 180bps and a net cash flow from operating activities €2.2 billion, up €0.2 billion".

It's big outfit, with massive resources - more than 13,000 people across North America alone – generating nearly $10 billion in sales in 2009.

As the promotion byline Vaseline asks “How Do You Flip for Vaseline Petroleum Jelly?” and "to celebrate the wonder jelly’s 140th anniversary, Vaseline is compiling the ultimate list of uses by inviting fans to share how they flip for Vaseline Petroleum Jelly".

The campaign centres on social media, and in particular their Facebook page:

...where loyalists can share their favorite uses. The 140 ways Vaseline likes best will be showcased in a video montage highlighting the wonder jelly’s versatility. Everyone who submits a tip will be entered for a chance to win1 a limited edition jar of Vaseline Petroleum Jelly which has been bedazzled with Swarovski crystals.

Nice :)

Where it gets a bit sticky is that the Facebook Page isn't there?!!!

Well, it is there, but empty!

The promo urges you to log on to the Vaseline page and share your tips and usage. And the Wall breathlessly urges:

The Official Vaseline Facebook PageHave you seen all of the new, exciting things happening on our page? Check out the "What's New" tab for a chance to win some cool prizes!

When you click on the What's New Tab, which has also been set as the landing page for facebook.com/vaseline, then you see COMING SOON.

Fair enough. These things happen, but I was a bit taken aback that a massive concern like Unilever doesn't care to coordinate it's PR and "buzz" with the ability to capture that buzz at the destination. It's a bit sloppy, maybe the rollout logistics got stuck in the Vaseline jelly?

Just as another thought about the campaign, although they did manage to get their Twitter page up and running, there is no link or integration to the campaign as a whole. The Twitter URL goes to a generic product page, which again has no connections or links to the Facebook page and campaign. Yet the PR builds this expection of a cross-linked event:

For 140 years, people have been talking about their favorite ways to use Vaseline Petroleum Jelly and now Vaseline is crowd sourcing some of the best tips from fans. The campaign will engage consumers via a newly launched Vaseline Facebook Community (www.facebook.com/vaseline) and Twitter page (www.twitter.com/vaselinebrand) where loyalists can share their favorite uses. The 140 ways Vaseline likes best will be showcased etc etc

I just wonder if anyone thought about the implementation of this linkage as the Twitter page is a dead-end, and from there I'm unsure how anyone would battle back to find the Facebook page.

I also wonder if it struck Unilever that there is a great coincidence gone begging - that the 140th anniversary and the 140 ideas they wish to select and promote coincide with the 140 characters of a tweet? To me this would have provided a vehicle to make some buzz, and to also provide more links between Twitter and the Facebook "community". I don't know what, I'm not that creative, but perhaps they could have used the 140-140-140 to be a really special focus on Twitter as the centrepiece of the promotion - as a hub to spoke out to Facebook?

When you sit back and look at these various aspects of the campaign and how it's been executed so far, it looks a little half-baked don't you think? I'm sure that Unilever can do better, but unfortunately in this case a whole lot of wheels have come unstuck (or got stuck depending on your perspective!).

But you know I amactually curious about the best 140 uses of Vaseline, I think that we could be amazed, so I've liked their empty Page.

How do you think this effort became unstuck in the corporate labyrinth?

How should have Unilever verified the rollout better?

How did their social media team break down?

Do you agree with me that their Twitter connection appears to be a dead-end in terms of this promotion?

Would you agree that the 140 years and 140 ideas could have been "buzzed up" with a connection to the 140 characters of Twitter?

July 08, 2010

The Digital Sport Summit#dss10 in Melbourne yesterday was a sold-out event, and while I saw a few less satisfied twitters I thought that it was very constructive first-time event and it had a fair deal of "how" rather than just "why". The "why" we are over, and I was impressed with how the clubs had really moved on to implementation and their lessons.

I didn't take many notes, just a few jots on my iPhone now and then. Here are the main three impressions that stand out in my mind 24 hours later:

#1 Vision: Essendon Football Club's Jonathan Simpson told how the Board of Directors nailed a vision 2 years ago for the club to commit more deeply to digital engagement with their fans, which by definition included social media. Impressively the Board said "hey we don't know how to do this but we want you (the staff) to find out" and it is a 2 year strategy. It was a "virtual connection" strategy, analogous to the successful "community connection" strategy already in place. It was 12 months ago that staff started on the social media "how to" of the journey, built their plans, presented their business case, and started implementing 6 months ago.

One of the fundamental tenets in building the engagement with fans is their "Content of Choice, Platform of Choice" decision, which was developed by the staff in their 6 month investigation period. This means that Essendon will engage with the fans where the fans are, in the fans social communities, and in with the content relevant to that community. This perhaps sounds obvious, but it is counter the thinking of most clubs who are obsessively concerned about driving traffic back to their club site.

Jonathan talked about the challenges in getting everyone else in the organisational side of the club on board, and of the conflicts and concerns about crossing organisational lines and responsibility. His answer was to get everyone together, to explain how "fan development" effected all other areas, and in particular to illustrate factually how it effected their KPIs. This helped align everyone.

All of this is a tough task, and getting all departments on board is always tough, so I give full credit to the Board for their vision as this is something we most often cry out for in making all successful projects work - the commitment of senior management, and above.

#2: Power of Spontaneity: I guess that the Phoenix SUNS fan engagement story is "well known" among those who "know" as it has won many awards, and it was great to have Jeramie McPeek as the opening speaker of the Summit. Amongst all the Suns neat work there was one item which really got me thinking - the Jared Dudley story.

In the face of a varying degree of enthusiasm for "twittering" and lingering degrees of skepticism, fear and doubt, Jared Dudley suddenly took to the medium like a duck to water. His spontaneity changed the face of twittering and social media in the club, and among players, and his "natural" reporting skills and tendencies built a whole new level of fan engagement. Tweeting from the locker room, pics and videos from players homes, parties, social events, tweeting his own stats, all lit up the fan engagement and at no cost to the club. That's contagious to everyone - in the club and outside.

Contrast that to the World Cup where the powers-that-be are more concerned to block and control then to allow spontaneity.

PS we have our own "Jared Dudley story" in Collingwood AFL Footballer Harry O'Brien, who is one of the first AFL players to embrace social media and gave a fabulous account of his enthusiasm at the Summit and has an active website.

#3 Business Acumen: Nick Marven told a great story about re-inventing the faltering business of the Perth Wildcats, and from being a disbeliever in social media as part of that to an advocate. The Wildcats are now the most successful club in the Australian NBL and has experienced annual membership growth of 35% resulting in consecutive sell-out attendances for over 2 years.

Nick gave a huge insight into the difference between a business customer and a sporting club customer, and the "sales funnel", and what I also really liked was his use of social media in personnel management within the club. His presentation is on Slideshare.

So in summary I'd say Essendon's vision is still rare, in any business, Suns' embracing of spontaneity is rare, in any business still, and the Wildcats' total business integration and alignment of social media is still rare, in any business. All great examples.

I had never realised that clubs see such value, and go to such effort, to engage their fans in how the club works, all the different departments, the people, the "organisation", and how they encourage this transparency. The evolution of social media provides a wonderful platform for these efforts.

June 13, 2010

Over a really pleasant discussion with Jamie Pappas today I learnt a lot about social media and EMC Corp - one of the corporate leaders and believers in the business benefits of social media.

We covered a lot, and one little snippet that jumped out at me was EMC's very positive attitude towards Facebook. I mean even today if you search on Linkedin I'm sure that you'll find a whole bunch of discussions around not only "why would B2B use social media" but also "Tell me why Facebook would work for business and in particular B2B". If you google those themes you'll be overwhelmed by the results, and I would suggest underwhelmed by the same old last decade hackneyed opinions of the naysayers.

EMC, like Cisco and Intel and Microsoft, are a light-year ahead of the Facebook-for-business-naysayers. In fact Huffington Post's Fortune 100 Companies' Social Media Savvy (STATS) says that 82 of the Fortune 100 tweet on a weekly basis, posting an average of 27 tweets a week. So big business is well out there in social media (including Facebook).

EMC keep a list of all "their" Facebook pages (about 35), meaning their corporate pages, and those set up by staff, and by others. It's not 100% complete, because they have to discover any "non-EMC" pages, and it's not always clear who the administrators of those pages are. It's also not 100% complete because of their open attitude towards their staff starting a page, with a voluntary code of practice.

The 3 Asks

Jamie said that EMC really only have 3 Asks of their staff if they wish to set up a Facebook page:

Share the URL, and the admin details (i.e. let Corp Social Media know);

Keep it active, or close it down.

I was impressed with all these, as it isn't about hard and fast rules, and what you can't do, but about what you can do to exercise your personal responsibility, and what EMC simply asks of you in return.

But I was really most impressed with the last Ask because in that very simple request EMC is getting to the heart of social media and the reason to be there. You need to be alive, communicating, conversing, and maintaining the presence - it's not a one-off exercise. That latter point is also why EMC don't recommend that staff set up a Facebook page for a product spec nor a single event. For that type of "campaign" purpose they can use one of the many socialised Event options within EMC's existing presences e.g. Events in a corporate FB page.

There's also a bit of brand protection, since a dead page can be a turn off to customers, and that's to be avoided.

Keep it Active

So what's it mean - "keep it active"? Again no rules but the EMC suggestion is:

If you're not able to tend to these tasks, then it's recommended that you consider shutting it down.

Is that really it?

OK, I hear you ask, is that really it for a company of EMC's size (43,000 employees), reputation, brand value, and shareholder obligations? Anyone can just launch on Facebook?

Well no, of course there is a milieu - an environment or setting. Key is leadership, from all levels about the wealth-generating power of social business, there is desire to have employees engaged and participating in all things "company" and social media is one fabric for this, and there is a desire to be open with customers, despite in some ways still being a conservative company within.

And there is social media training, and a Social Media Club, and a Social Media Advisory Council. And of course there is a social media Policy, which I place last as a necessary but totally insufficient part of embracing social media yet which often dominates management's attention elsewhere.

Are there any downsides to such a liberal open-minded approach. Sure, there is some cleaning up to do from time to time, some duplication, some fails, and some lessons. The lessons are what the Social Media Advisory Council think about, and make any continuous improvements.

While some firms regard the possibility of negative comments as "risks", EMC sees them as opportunities to engage and to learn. As Jamie says, customers will often not tell you something face to face but will put it out in the social media andexpect that it will be discovered. It's an opportunity to be proactive.

Business benefits outweigh the risks

Overall, in EMC's judgement, the business benefits of tapping into to enthusiasm of employees wishing to communicate outweighs the risks of the lightweight "approvals" process for staff wanting to set up on Facebook.

...So you have a full-time job to maintain a facebook page? seriously?
What happened to the model Cisco’s Anne Plese talked about at Blogworld where the employees engaged actively and built these capabilities in a collaborative model themselves and it did not take additional headcount and funding and was not a centralized command and control environment?"

It's a good challenge, because we then got more insight. Although personally I take the view that a company like Cisco, and on the back of the GFC, isn't going to have any corporate positions that don't make business sense and are hard-justified. But hey the question was asked, and the conversation is great.

Autumn Truong @autumntt rose to the challenge with a very positive and open response, and explained the corporate coordination role and how "In my role, I’ve been very focused internally – working with various functional groups within my organization and across Cisco to understand how to effectively leverage social media to share information and communicate externally with our existing audience as well as a new set of influencers."

To me that makes a lot of sense. It's an overhead yes, but the price of lack of coordination could be much higher. I also believe that having someone free of the "operational" pressures allows them to spark new (often incremental) ideas which span functional groups and create real value from new social media initiatives. Without that person these opportunities fall through the cracks.

It's all about balance

Coordination is necessary, and usually starts as a role. When the load gets big enough as in Cisco, these roles become jobs. Me being a graduate of the Social Media Academy one part of our methodology addresses the Cross Functional Corporate Social Media Framework.

This Framework, which we name the Comstar model, provides the understanding that a social media oriented corporation is actually applying a new state of mind to its culture and processes. The framework includes all departments such as sales, marketing, service & support, product management, HR, Logistics, and all other groups and its respective teams. The ComStar model suggest a social media service-team-based organization structure.

The Comstar Principle

At its core, the ComStar Model has one key principle, and it is this:

Develop a social media service team (SMST) that supports all departments in the organization
The SMST members do not necessarily tweet, blog, comment themselves instead empowers others to do so.
Similar to IT team, finance support or HR that services an entire company, the SMST functions the same way.

Cisco has this same idea in the cross-functional role described by Autumn Truong.

What do you think, is this "overhead" or a valuable and perhaps necessary role of cross-functional coordination in any larger firm moving towards a social business model?

May 06, 2010

Brian, the 39% for internal collaboration and learning really surprised me. That means that cross-functional activities already play a big role, whereas we might have thought that social media was slower to move out of marketing/PR if we go by the number of articles suggesting that it needs to.

This is a brilliant line which I will use, with thanks: "The point is this, social media is owned by its participants and steered by the voices who invest its direction".

You also said "At some point however, social media permeates the fabric of every business until it reaches the very essence that defines the spirit, persona, and intention of the brand" and I agree.

With respect to Microsoft, it was recently found to be the #1 social media savvy company in the US, based on penetration of social media throughout the firm if I understood the criteria correctly.

Most commentators, and the press release itself, said that "it was to be expected" that tech-savvy companies would top the list, even though IBM equaled last position in the top 50.
I beg to disagree and would have thought that brand-savvy consumer marketing savvy companies might have been expected to be the "natural high achievers". I wondered what your opinion is of Microsoft's achievement; I rate it highly.

In fact I think it gives them a very significant edge which your post here helps explain, as to change the fabric of an organisation in this way is no trivial task. While it's competitors are seeking to do so, Microsoft is ahead and has a significant competitive advantage. Would you agree?

May 03, 2010

The recent Netprospex Social 50 survey ranking US companies on their social media savviness rightly received a lot of air time. It's an achievement, no doubt, to come out on top for Microsoft.

For me, a couple of things stood out in almost all of the coverage which I read:

firstly the oft-repeated and accepted view that this was almost to be expected as Microsoft was a technology company and therefore these would "obviously" rank higher; and,

secondly the complete lack of any analysis or extrapolation of Microsoft's social media prowess.

In this post and the next I will explore these issues, as I think that the first issue is misguided and that the the second is worth exploring.

Do technology companies have a natural advantage?

Not only did commentators say so - this comment from Reuters "Not surprisingly, the list was dominated by technology and software companies, while online retailers such as Amazon.com and eBay claimed two of the top five ranking" - but the press release itself also said so! They imply by "technology companies" IT technology companies.

But is this true and why should it be true? Personally I don't believe that it is obvious that this should true, nor in fact do I believe that it is true.

I would have said that the companies which we might have expected to have an "obviously" higher ranking are the big brands, the marketing companies, and the best of the online retailers. In fact we see The Gap at #25, BMW at #29,Nike at #41 and Coca Cola at #50. EBay, Amazon and Disney are #2,3,4 which "makes sense", and surprise is Raytheon at #8.

My point with respect to Microsoft is this - we know that for an organisation to transform itself into a social media savvy one is a major task. It takes planning, culture change, organisation, empowerment and operational attention. Mostly it is a very hard corporate cultural change task and most organisations have not even begun that journey.

Therefore I think it says something very important about Microsoft and its culture that it was able to achieve this #1 ranking.

In fact in my experience achieving change in IT companies is often extremely difficult, the folk are very stubborn and just stick their heads down and hope things will go away. It can't be easy, look at IBM languishing at #49. EMC which has a great social media track record is #16.

But checking the survey scores (by which the ranking is made) gives Microsoft an even more impressive "win" since Microsoft scored 306 and EMC, for example, 123. That's a big gap. In fact Microsoft scores 50% more than #2-ranked Amazon.

Why I think it is important is because Microsoft is often lambasted for its inability to change. For its supposed inability to roll out new initiatives globally, because it is said that the geographic structures kill the initiatives.

In fact because of the common negative commentary about Microsoft losing its edge I was originally going to call this post "I have come to praise Microsoft not to bury it" to mix up Brutus's line.

I'm now of a mind to say that the results of the social savvy survey undermine those suggestions. An organisation has to capable of change in order to become social media savvy, because it does take change and it takes hard work.

In summary, I don't see why we should not have expected the consumer retail "brands" to do better, and I don't think it is at all natural that technology companies would top the list, and I think Microsoft deserves credit for getting there as it signals a capacity to execute change.

PS we might also reflect on the Altimeter Group 2009 survey which concluded that companies who had the greatest depth and breadth of social media engagement showed significant financial results ahead of those that were not engaged. Microsoft ranked #5 in that survey (Starbucks #1). So Microsoft's contining high level of engagement may well lead to continued superior financial performance - something which on all counts must concern IBM, for example.

PSS Not to be overly fawning here but it's impressive that Boston College Reputation Institute2009 CSR Index of companies perceived to be strong in the area of ethics, citizenship and workplace practices placed Disney and Microsoft at the top. Disney was #4 in the social savvy survey. Microsoft has it's challenges, but it has some amazing corporate assets both tangible and intangible.

December 08, 2009

According to NewsTelstra is "Australia's most hated company in terms of complaints". The news is that Telstra has decided, shortly after firing its Chief Marketing Officer Holly Kramer, that it would like to hear from customers about how to "combat soaring dissatisfaction levels".

"We know we've disappointed customers," Telstra's executive director for market-based management Gloria Farler said. "It's not entirely altruistic. If we have low customer satisfaction that means low customer loyalty and if your customers are not loyal they are very likely to (leave), which leads to a high cost of marketing and that leads to disappointing profits," she added.

(Aside - it is amazing how huge those profits actually are in any telco's language given the high levels of dissatisfaction - leading to a kind of hostage syndrome among customers.)

So this is an admirable, if not altruistic, initiative.

Will or can it succeed?

On face value it would seem like a great idea, and with a sure chance of success given the pent up rage against Telstra from its customers.

But before proceeding into the unknown let's start with the known and proclaim that this will indeed be a certain successas measured by Telstra.

How do I know this? Because David Thodey, Telstra's CEO, has reportedly "offered $40 million in bonuses to staff if there are even slight improvements in satisfaction levels". Therefore, as in every large business, these numbers will be met and bonuses will be paid - there is zero doubt!!

Now, let's venture into the unknown to ponder will it actually work in reality.

There is no doubt that Telstra's customers want to give their feedback. After all the very News article itself had generated over 421 comments in 12 hours since 6am the day it was published, that's about 35 per hour or more than 1 comment every 2 minutes.

That's a remarkable number in itself, 100X the normal response.

The key to success is in the planning, the essence of having an integrated social media strategy as opposed to a campaign. So let's list some challenges, and then we can track how things progress at Telstra against these challenges:

1. Since they have 104,000 complaints on the table with names addresses and telephone numbers from the last 12 months, and now another 421 comments which are 98% hostile, is Telstra firstly going to track all those down in the real world and the social media world? Or does Telstra just let lie comments such as the following and start a brand new day with the community portal?

I just had to check my calendar to make sure it wasn't April Fools Day. :-);

Like there's ANY chance whatsoever they will actually listen to complaints and/or suggestions and fix anything. They never have before and there's a less than zero chance they will now. This is just a PR exercise to get some exposure;

What a joke, you dont know what to do to improve customer service, i thought you had 104,000 customers last year who could give you an idea, just an example of the fact that youre NOT LISTENING so why will you listen to people who complete your on line surveys;

I just want to speak to a real person that gives a damn.

2. Do they have their heads screwed on, or are they dreaming, about the tsumani of rage and complaints that will flood into "My Telstra Experience" experiment exactly parallel to the comments to the article? Presumably they will have an already detailed and approved strategic and operational plan and resources to handle these and to coordinate responses in a systematic and timely way.

3. What is the plan of the coordination needed, which will be more than once a day to start, to handle the tsumani, and how are all departments keyed into that plan including, for example, the ability of the call centres to answer basic questions about My Telstra Experience?

4. How well thought through is the risk analysis of managing the rage, managing those who complain loudest, working with the social media as people blog Twitter and Facebook their experiences with My Telstra Experience?

5. How well is Telstra prepared as an organisation to respond to the My Telstra Experience inputs given that (a) their own staff already know most of the problems and have made zero progress (according to the doubling of complaints) and (b) the inputs from customers mostly speak to symptoms and not causes. It's about the organisational mindset - the "prepared mind" as Pasteur once said.

OK, where are we?

On face value and given history this initiative has a very poor chance of real success (I don't mean that the Telstra managers will not get their bonuses!). However I'm not a fan of being trapped by history so let's see what might be different this time.

On the issue of "what might be different this time" the BIG difference since the last in a string of similar attempts by Telstra is that we are now in a new era of established social media. This means that no matter how much they try to constrain views within the closed panel it will not work. There is absolutely no doubt that this will be a public exercise.

Now given that social media IS the BIG DIFFERENCE now you would wonder why a firm would be reverting back to the past in conducting closed shop panels as market research? It seems like a backward viewto me, but Telstra are obviously being advised by Vision Critical who are experts in this field and have an impressive track record.

You might also ask me how come this has anything to do with social media as it is a closed panel of surveys? Well that's a good question, and one which no doubt Telstra has thought through. My answer - the panel has people, those same people exist in the social media; the panel will no doubt ask some open questions or give people a chance to make open comments - that opens the chance for the pent up rage and the outlets into social media if satisfaction is not forthcoming. There are other reasons as well that this closed panel is no longer a close panel, but that's enough for now.

But back to my headline - will customers help? They will certainly try, whether it lasts is completely up to Telstra's management of the relationship, and once doubt sets in to the customers' minds then it is all over rover.